PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Professional Development

Ross Institute offers comprehensive online and onsite training that imparts the knowledge and skills necessary to implement Ross Learning System. Drawing on a network of mentors, scholars, and master teachers, Ross provides professional resources and consulting services in a variety of formats for educators, educational leaders, and policymakers at both new and established schools across the globe. Cutting-edge educational research is incorporated into all programming, drawing on lessons learned from Ross School lab for teaching and learning. Offering site visits, workshops, courses, mentoring, retreats, and customized solutions, Ross Institute also certifies master teachers and accredits schools licensing Ross Learning System.

The Ross Learning System platform provides the full Ross Spiral Curriculum and resources for teachers to understand the interdisciplinary content and outcomes and to teach the curriculum in their classrooms. Written to the teacher with notes that unpack the intentionality of design and implementation, Ross Learning System also includes embedded teacher professional development modules that cover grade and discipline-specific content and skills, unpack integrated projects or other learning experiences and assessments, and offer pedagogical background and examples for teaching 21st century knowledge, character, and competencies that Ross Learning System is designed to address.

Courses

Professional development courses are available both in person and online in the form of guided learning workshops or hybrid courses. Topics explored through these options typically address broader topics, such as systems thinking or sustainability and make use of Ross digital tools, including the Interactive Spiral, Interactive Histomaps, and the Project Circles sustainability interactive. Participants may take these courses and workshops individually, connecting with other learners via online forums and discussion sessions. Courses may also be offered as hybrid courses with synchronous sessions. Both formats provide the chance to more deeply engage with RLS content, Ross faculty, Ross Institute mentors and scholars, as well as deliver assignments and offer opportunities for participants to apply their learning by designing curricula, resources, and tools they can use with their students.

Ross Teacher Certification

Ross Teacher Certification provides interested teachers an opportunity to be designated Ross Master Teachers through a two-year hybrid program while they are in a classroom or school that has licensed Ross Learning System. The certification program consists of nine courses, an immersive practicum, and the development and defense of an online portfolio that evidences how the teacher’s learning meets the outcomes of the program.

Teacher Certification will be required of all schools working toward or maintaining Ross Accreditation, but teachers interested in Ross Learning System and Ross Model may also enroll in these offerings individually. A Ross Master Teacher will be able to implement the essential elements of the Ross Model, understand how to design new curricular materials that are part of Ross Learning System, and become a mentor and leader for colleagues and others enrolled in Ross professional development courses.

Summer Academy

Summer Academy @Ross sets an international standard for excellence in professional development. Hosted each August at Ross School campus in East Hampton, New York, Ross faculty and colleagues from other schools address current issues in global education through discussion and attending presentations by mentors and invited scholars during a weeklong intensive academy.

Participants explore cutting-edge topics around a particular theme and deepen related best practices through lectures, workshops, and seminars with mentors and invited scholars and education specialists. Past speakers include Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA; Pierre Léna, astrophysicist, Founder and Honorary President of Fondation La main à la pâte; Yves Coppen, paleoanthropologist at the Collège de France and co-discoverer of Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy; Kurt Fischer, professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education; Yong Zhao, presidential chair and director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon; Mary Helen Immordino-Yang of USC’s Rossier School of Education; Pedro Noguera, professor of education at UCLA; Heidi Hayes Jacobs, founder and president of Curriculum Designers, Inc.; and Jeremy Rifkin, economist, writer, political advisor, and founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends.

Summer Academy sessions cover a wide-range of topics, such as neuroscience, immigration and globalization, teaching for differentiation, sustainability, and ecological literacy. In 2016, the academy focused on a systems thinking approach to global education that unpacks the theory and pedagogy behind the 21st century global literacies—knowledge, character, and competencies—that students and their teachers need to address a complex and rapidly changing world.